Freedom Writers Diary by Zlata Filipovic w/ Erin Gruwell (Banned Books Week)

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)42 Comments

Twenty three year old Erin Gruwell was a new teacher in Long Beach, California.  Erin was filled with energy and ideas and was not deterred when she was given the students referred to as the “unteachables”.  Going optimistically head long into the class it did not take Erin long to see the invisible lines drawn between race, color, and social status.

When a picture is passed through the room making fun of a student, Erin brings up how hateful things like this start wars.  Mentioning the Holocaust she is shocked to find that most of the students in her room had never heard of this.  Using her own money, as the school would not provide books for such social outcasts, Erin teaches the students through reads like Anne Frank, and slowly builds the trust not only in her, but in each other.


I always try to read a book before I watch a movie although, such as in this case, it does not happen that way.  When I seen this movie years ago I did not even know it was a book.  The movie was phenomenal and even as I write this review and I think of this powerful story it brings tears to my eyes.

I had purchased the books years back after realizing it was a book and as many of my books do… it sat on the shelf until recently.  Reading this book, was  just as wonderful as the movie.

I can not stand hate.  It is a dirty four letter word.  I can not handle families torn apart and people judging each other for anything.  Having lost all of my immediate family members to tragedies, it breaks my heart to see families choose not to speak to one another over whatever differences they feel they have.

What I wouldn’t give to have one more conversation with my mom.  My dad.  My sister.

I am getting off course, but this book brings out a lot of emotion as I felt again within the pages, the hate, the labels, the teachers who looked at these students as a waste of their time and the schools money.  What Erin does costs her much, but the outcome…. is priceless.  Within this true story you will find the power and passion of one person, who erased the invisible hate lines by daring to cross them and showing love to students that were starving for it.

An amazing and powerful read that if you have not read – I highly recommend you do.  And this week, if you can make the time, I challenge you to rent this movie.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Amazon Rating


Why was The Freedom’ Writers Diary Banned?

On March 11, 2008, an English teacher at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, Connie Heerman, was suspended for a year and a half without pay for using the Freedom Writers Diary in her classroom against the wishes of the school board.[ Administrators objected to racial slurs and sexual content in portions of the book. Heerman had received permission the previous year to attend a workshop based on the books and obtained permission slips from the parents involved. The school board contends that Heermen did not properly follow the rules to receive permission to use the book. Erin Gruwell commented on the controversy, saying, “The best way to get a teenager to read a book is to ban it. When someone who is a daunting authority figure says, ‘Give us your book’, I think these students [thought], ‘There must be something powerful in these words’.

*FYI.  The Diary of Anne Frank is also a banned book.

(1982) Challenged in Wise County, Virginia due to protests of several parents who complained the book contains sexually offensive passages. (1983) Four members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for the rejection of this title because it is a “real downer.” (1998) Removed for two months from the Baker Middle School in Corpus Christi, Texas after two parents charged that the book was pornographic. The book was returned after students waged a letter-writing campaign to keep it, and the review committee recommended the book’s retention.


Morning Meandering… Reading To Beat The Banned

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)39 Comments


Ok Ok… that was a little cheesy but I am trying to have a little fun with the word banned this week.  😛  I noticed that Natalie over at Mindful Musings has a wonderful post for banned and challenged books as well as links to other posts and giveaways around this topic.

Yesterdays trip to Barnes and Noble in St. Cloud was a lot of fun and I chatted with quite a few Minnesota authors.   Many of them will be at the Twin Cities Book Festival in October that we are doing the book blogger meet up at, so if you are in the area and able to join us, let me know.  I have information I can send you.

Of course… book stores and me mix together well and I did leave with several…. err…… ok, more than several books.

All but the bottom one are Minnesota Authors

Today Navy Son will be hanging out for the football game and for the entire day!    That will be a lot of fun!  He has been so busy since he got home and trying to get around to see everyone that this will be our first full day to hang out and catch up.  Of course during the game, while making shrimp chowder, I fully plan to read. 😀

Have an awesome Sunday everyone!

Why was J K Rowlings Harry Potter Series, banned?

JK Rowling, author of the wildly popular Harry Potter series, is sometimes referred to as the writer Americans would most like to see banned. According to librarian scientists, there were more than 3,000 attempts to have her books removed from U.S. libraries between 2000 and 2005 alone. Fanatics across the nation still claim that Rowling’s books promote the occult and Satanism.

The Face On The Milk Carton by Caroline B Cooney (Banned Books Week)

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)51 Comments


15-year-old Janie Johnson feels plain.  Ordinary.  She wishes she had a better name like her friends Sarah-Charlotte Sherwood and Adair O’ Dell.  Those are names that say something.  She thinks maybe she could start spelling her name with a “y”, like Jayne.  Or two”y’s”, Jayyne.   And maybe her last name could be something cooler, like Johnstone.  How will she ever be anyone as Janie Johnson?

All of this changes when one day at lunch she sees a face on the milk carton of a little three-year old pigtail girl.  The face, is Janie’s face.   She remembers the dress in the picture and suddenly her world is turned upside down.  Is she a missing child?  Are her parents not really her parents?  If she is not Janie Johnson….

then who is she?



The Face On The Milk Carton was a quick and good read.  As I was reading this book I could not help but feel I had seen this somewhere and had a flash back to a younger version of me watching an After School Special about this.  (Anyone remember after school specials?  They were on tv around 4:00 in the afternoon and they were stories with a message. )   Sure enough, I looked it up and this was actually a tv show and seeing the actress that played Janie, it all came back to me.

The book deals with typical teenage angst.   Janie gives me the impression in the beginning of just being bored.  Of course that rapidly changes as she starts to have anxiety over what she discovered on the milk carton and starts to explore what that could possibly mean for her and the people she loves as her parents.

I thought the book was handled well and as I finished it I really had no idea why this book would have made the banned books list.  Other than a brief possible sexual opportunity – which is considered, but declined, there really was nothing in the book.

The books ends suddenly and many questions are still left unanswered.  Apparently to my surprise, the story doesn’t end with this book.  There is a sequel to the  book called “Whatever Happened To Janie?”  AND then it goes on to a third book called “The Voice On The Radio” and concludes this series (4 books now… it is a series) with “What Janie Found“.

I never knew about the other books so that was interesting.  Also interesting is that none of the other books are on the challenged or banned lists.  😀

Why was Caroline B Cooney’s Face On The Milk Carton Banned?

The faintest reference to the idea of sex (a possible first encounter) was all that it took for a challenge to be made to this book. Subsequent protests involved a perceived “challenge to authority” that occurred when Janie becomes to determined to establish her true parentage.

I borrowed this from our local library


Morning Meanderings…. Jumping On The “Banned Wagon”

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)24 Comments

Good Morning and welcome to Banned Books Week, officially September 25 – October 2.   You can read up more about it here .  I for one am excited and my plan is to review a book a day this week from the Banned Books Lists, as well as give you a little background on why it was on the list.  I am hoping many of you will join me in reading a banned book or two this week and reviewing it.  If you are, please link your banned books related  posts to the linky below.  I would like to stop by and see what you are reading.  I am hoping to do a drawing at the end of the week from those who linked their posts…. still looking for the right giveaway item for this event.  😀

I also plan to share a book a day on my Morning Meanderings that tells about a banned book.  Hopefully by the end of the week we will all know a little more about banned books.

Please add your links to your actual posts.

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Click here to enter your link and view the entire list of entered links…

Today, is going to be fun.  I am meeting up with Chance, our 15-year-old dynamic Kinship Partner and he and I are going to drive the hour to St Cloud.  I want to stop in Little Falls at their book store and see if they are doing anything for banned books week as it is on our way.  Once in St Cloud we are going to have lunch at Mongo’s and then off to Barnes and Noble where they are having a local author event.  Chance is also a reader so I though this would be a fun little day trip.

Tomorrow I will be spending the day with hubby and Navy Son.  They will watch football and I will read…. and then we will do dinner together.

Any plans for the weekend?

Why Was Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Banned?

On March 18, 1885, The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass. expelled Huck from the library as “trash and only suitable for slums.”

In 1902, the Brooklyn Public Library banned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with the statement that “Huck not only itched but he scratched,” and that he said “sweat” when he should have said “perspiration.”

In general, the debate over Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has centered around the language of the book, which has been objected to on social grounds. Yielding to public pressure, some textbook publishers have substituted “slave” or “servant” for the term that Mark Twain uses in the book, which has been considered derogatory to African Americans.

Author Chat with Emma Donoghue (author of ROOM)

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)29 Comments

Just yesterday I finished reading the newly released book by author Emma Donoghue, ROOM.  Now today I am delighted to have her here at Book Journey to share with us a bit about herself and the book that’s being talked about everywhere.  Please give a super warm welcome to Emma Donoghue.

Emma Donoghue

Welcome Emma!  I am so delighted to have you here today.  First off, it is a tradition that I ask you how you take your coffee?


Emma:  Caffe latte only.  Which means that when staying in luxury hotels, as I am on this US book tour, I have a lot of trouble getting hold of my morning brew, because a latte is the one thing most hotels can’t provide!


You are right Emma, being a plain black coffee drinker,I hadn’t thought about that!   When did you first find your love for books?


Emma:  A male babysitter (a ‘spoiled priest’, meaning one who dropped out of the seminary) read me the entire CHRONICLES OF NARNIA when I was about four.  Bless him for ever!



Oh, I love that!  What a great memory!  What would you consider to be a favorite book you have read and why?


Emma:  Recently… SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray, the other Irish writer on the Man Booker Prize long list.  I’ve no idea why it didn’t make it onto the shortlist because it’s the most dazzling study of an Irish boys’ boarding school with some of the funniest dialogue I’ve ever read.


ROOM is such a powerful read.  Where did you get the idea to write such a book?


Emma:  From being a mother, really.  Because when I heard about the Fritzl case in Austria, the idea for ROOM sprang fully formed into my mind: a child’s story of growing up in a single room and mistaking it for the whole world.


I remember that story Emma, it was horrifying.   Was there any part of this book that was harder to write then the rest?


Emma:  I had to sweat over the middle section (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here!) to make it plausible in every detail, and to capture the sensory shock of it for Jack.


What would you hope that your readers experience when they read ROOM?


Emma:  Utter involvement, not just in Jack’s consciousness but in that of Ma – and to achieve that they have to do all the work of figuring out what Jack doesn’t know yet.


Emma you have written several novels.  I have only had the pleasure of reading ROOM so far, what would you suggest I read next of yours?


Emma:  Well, they’re all very different, but my 2008 novel THE SEALED LETTER is quite a page-turning courtroom drama about a notorious Victorian divorce.


Thank you Emma, I will take you up on that, it sounds good!   Where do you enjoy doing your writing and do you have any sort of rituals that go with it?


Emma:  No, I just flip open my cracked-screen laptop wherever I happen to be and go to it. My only ritual is, get the kids off to school and daycare first!


Is there a fictitious character  that you would like to be friends with and why?


Emma:  I’d love to meet Emma Woodhouse, heroine of Austen’s novel, partly because I was named after her but mostly because she’d be a sparkling conversationalist.



Great pick!   It is customary that I ask each author I chat with to share a little known fact about themselves.

Emma:  Well, all that springs to mind is a negative fact, but it’s unusual given that I’m Irish: I can’t stand the taste of alcohol.  So I’ve never had a drink, which on the plus side means I’ve never lost a day to a hangover, but on the minus side means I have to ask friends for advice whenever I’m writing a scene with any kind of intoxication in it.


Emma thank you so much for time today!  I appreciate you chatting and sharing here with us at Book Journey.


Readers, you can see more of what Emma is up to here at her website.  Also – for those of you who have read this book, I had one more question I asked Emma, but that is going to have to go on the spoiler page.  If you have read the book, be sure to check that out.

Enter Here


ROOM by Emma Donoghue

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)37 Comments

Jack is 5.  He lives with his ma and he loves to sit at TABLE and play games using RUG.  He sleeps in WARDROBE and spends hours of time with his ma every day.  Jack loves his life. To his mother, it is a nightmare.

What makes Jack different from all other five years olds is that he has spent his entire life in a single room having never see anything beyond and not even knowing that anything exists beyond the room.  Jack’s mom was abducted when she was 19 and has been kept locked in this room for the past 7 years.   Told from the perspective of 5-year-old Jack, we experience his life through his eyes.  He likes his routines and he enjoys how they make up games using paper bags or string.  He hides when Old Nick comes to visit at night.

But things are about to change.


ROOM is an extraordinary read.  I stepped into a read like no other I have read.  It took a few pages to get into the way Jack talks, and to fully get the understanding of his world, but once there, I could hardly put the book down.  What impressed me throughout this book was the devotion of Jack’s mother.  Everything is for Jack and what that brings out in this read is a mother and son relationship that many of us would envy.  Jack is smart because ma has all day to teach him words, and spelling, and meanings.  When Jack asks questions about what he sees on tv, ma has all the time in the world (quite literally) to explain to him.

What an amazing world Emma Donoghue created within these pages.  I was astounded at the great detail of Jack’s character.  It wasn’t hard for me to imagine five-year old Jack being so smart because of all the access he had to be taught.  While this book is a fiction read I could not help but think about the real abductions that happen in this world, and stories like Ma and Jack;s that are sadly true.

I would say this book is one of the best books I have read this year and would highly recommend that you take the time to read this powerful that at times made me laugh, and eventually…. made me cry.

Picador.com has a layout of what ROOM would look like.  Take a look and now imagine Ma in this room (and only in this room) for seven years and Jack for his entire life (yes, he was born in there too – on RUG).


I am going to activate the Spoiler Page for this read (see button below) as there was one part that disturbed me a little even though I worked hard to wrap my mind around it.  A few bookish friends have also requested discussing the book in detail once I had read it so the spoiler page will be a safe place to do that.


Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is  an award-winning Booker-shortlisted writer, now living in Canada with my family. Her books are ROOM, THE SEALED LETTER, LANDING, TOUCHY SUBJECTS, LIFE MASK, THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS, SLAMMERKIN, KISSING THE WITCH, HOOD, STIRFRY (fiction), as well as INSEPARABLE, WE ARE MICHAEL FIELD, POEMS BETWEEN WOMEN and PASSIONS BETWEEN WOMEN (literary history).

Peter Carey, Emma Donoghue, Damon Galgut, Howard Jacobson, Andrea Levy and Tom McCarthy are today, Tuesday 7 September, announced as the six shortlisted authors for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. For over four decades the prize – the leading literary award in the English speaking world – has brought recognition, reward and readership to the outstanding new novels of the year. The shortlist was announced by Chair of judges, Sir Andrew Motion, at a press conference held at Man’s London headquarters.

The six books, selected from the Man Booker Prize longlist of 13, are:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Picador – Pan Macmillan)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books – Grove Atlantic)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review –
Headline Publishing Group)

Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape – Random House)

Book Journey has updated the 2010 reading map to include ROOM

Cover Story:  It works.  Its plain and simple and makes me want to know more about a book with this cover and this title.

Amazon Rating

My author chat with Emma Donoghue

I received this book for review in New York at BEA in May 2010

Morning Meanderings… Banned Books Week Eve

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)33 Comments


Good morning!  Another yuck day here in Minnesota.  The weather is cold and damp, the sky is deeply overcast.  Horrible weather for bike riding (which I have canceled for the weekend) but a wonderful day for reading!

It is the day before Banned Book Week start and I have many of my contenders in house, and a few I am waiting on at the library.  Earlier this week, I posted a list of the top 100 Banned Books of the last two decades.  Many of you were shocked to see that titles that you know and love were on that list.

Banned Book Week starts on September 25 – October 2.  My plan is to review a banned book a day as well as give as much information as I can as to why it was banned.  I encourage you to join me by reading banned books over the next week.   If you write-up a post about Banned Books Week,please let me know in a comment here.  Tomorrow, I will set up a linky where you are welcome to link your reviews of Banned Books over the next week.  I would love to stop in and see what you have reviewed.

Banned Books in Audio format

Audio counts too, in fact I was on Audible.com last night and they too have a group of audio’s that are available for this week.  I think I am going to try Fahrenheit 451 again as it is by a different reader than the one I found at the library.

I would also be very interested if there are any activities or displays in your book stores or libraries having to do with Banned Books Week.  If so, please share that information here in a comment and if you are doing a banned books post, include that information in there as well.


Twas the night before banned book week and all over the table,

were books I planned to read this week, as much as I am able.

The books were chosen from the ALA list with care,

In hopes to encourage others to read these books if only they dare!

Now J K Rowling, what could you have been thinking?

Writing about a magical school – you must have really been drinking!

And Judy Blume, sure kids love to read your books,

but you are on that long list and getting dirty looks!

Irving, Bradbury, and oh yes you too Harper Lee,

some people think what a waste of a tree.

But I tell you I plan to read each with great care,

in hopes that during Banned Book Week you will join me there!

(Ok… I dabbled a wee bit in writing and poetry in school… and yeah, they were pretty much all silly like this.)

Have an awesome day!  😀


Morning Meanderings… What Was Lost Was Found… and Found… and Found… and OH WOW!!!

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)80 Comments


Good morning!  What a wonderful day already!  Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday on my missing book and passports.  I appreciate the advice, concern and the shared stories.  You really made my day!


First Find:  My passport.  After searching all the usual areas, I started searching purses I have used over the past year.  BINGO!  Sure enough I not only found my passport in the purse I used last year during the trip but also my lost license, a little cash in American and in Limps.  WOO HOO!!!!


Second Find:  Al’s passport.  He spent the afternoon searching his office and before we left for a meeting we had last night he came up to the house and said he had no idea where it could be.  I asked if he had checked his brief case that he carried his lap top in when he travels.  We went back to the office and FOUND!  Both passports secured!  😀


Third Find:  The book.  As much as I totally want to blame Bailey….  I can not.  As I went over my moves again and again I kept remembering that there was a point when I was leaving for kickball that I thought maybe I should take the book and thought better of it.  I went out in the garage and walked around my vehicle and then seen the book on a box with some papers I had brought out for recycling.  Good Grief…..  FOUND!!!!



Fourth Find:  Ok…. if you read yesterday mornings meandering you should be counting on your fingers right now all the things I mentioned I had lost….. there was three.  You are correct.  SO you may be wondering what else could I have possibly lost and found?


Well… I have a fun story.  I was in a deep sleep at 6 am when I heard a voice…. I slowly woke up and as my eyes adjusted…….

There was my son from the Navy!  SQQQQUUUUEEEEEEE!!!!   I didn’t know he was coming home!  He has been in the Navy since December and he graduated a couple of weeks ago but said that he did not have his orders yet when he could come home and thought it would be some time in October.  Apparently my husband knew he was coming but Brad wanted it to be a surprise.  Oh WOW!!!!!!!

Brad (Navy Son!) and Elmo

So how about that for an exciting 24 hours?

Morning Meanderings…. Seriously?

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)90 Comments


Good morning bookie, bookette, bookers, booklings, and all around bookish types.  You will not BELIEVE what happened to me yesterday.

I lost the book I was reading.

Yup.  You heard me…. let me recount my steps:

4:45 pm I am in usual reading room in the reading chair…. errr…. reading said book.

5:22 pm I get up from said chair, and place junk mail acting as book mark into said book to hold place.

5:45 I am changed for kick ball (do not laugh…. I play kick ball… all the cool kids are doing it) and I leave said house in said jeep to go to said ball park

7:33 I return home after two kickball (yup there’s that word again) games in which we were beaten to a pulp at both.  My only happiness will be found in the pages of the book that I am successfully reading through with full intentions of having review up for today.

7:40 I realize said book is not where I thought it should be (in said reading room by said chair)

7:45 a search is conducted of the area I had been in prior to my leaving the said house.  This includes:  my closet, the bathroom, the kitchen, the front room, the couch, the entryway, the garage, the jeep… I was thorough.  I did this twice.

8:10  Now I am annoyed.  I am wasting precious reading time during this search and I can not imagine where book has gone.

8:20 I start looking for suspects.

  • Suspect #1:  The Husband.  Sure, he is not a big reader but he is in the house where the book has turned up missing.  I ask if he has seen it and he says no (a likely story!).  I describe what the book looks like… I am sure he is thinking how is that different from the hundreds of other books in the house.  His eyes glaze over and I let him go but tell him not to leave town.

  • Suspect #2:  The dogs.  Elmo is old and blind in one eye so I am doubtful if it was him.  Plus he is so loyal to me.  Bailey on the other hand, has never liked me and has always been Al’s (hubby) dog.  I could see Bailey doing something with it just to watch me go crazy.

  • Suspect #3:  me.  I was in a hurry leaving the house and in a bit of a panic as I had just realized I did not know where our passports were (I know… a real night for losing things!) and we are 8 weeks out from Honduras.  I was changing for kickball and looking for passports and I do not honestly know how much of this time the book was with me.  Did I drag the book along the passport search trail?  Honestly I do not know.

As of this morning.  Book is still missing.

What book?

ROOM.

I know, right?  I was at a really good part too.

*sigh*

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Bookies Book Club Pick)

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)43 Comments

Harriet Vanger, a young member of a very wealthy Swedish family disappears at the age of 16.   Gone without a trace, 40 years later, Harriet’s Uncle is still haunted by her absence… was she murdered?  If so by who?

Mikael Blomkvist part owner of the magazine Millenium has just taken a huge hit to the pocket-book.  Caught in a libel conviction he decided to take a breather from the magazine until the heat wears off and instead of a break, finds himself hired by Harriet’s uncle to research and try to find evidence as to what happened all those years ago.  With the help of a very damaged young tattooed computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, Mikael finds himself searching for pieces that will change the lives of all involved.


Sound popcorn worthy?  Well…. it depends on who you ask.  This was my book club, The Bookies, pick for our September read.  Due to a crazy busy month, by the time we reviewed this book last week I was not finished.  Not even close to being finished.  However, I think that really gave me an outside look at an interesting and somewhat hard discussion with our book club.

Our group met at a lovely Mexican restaurant and over assorted yummy dishes (I was so tired I forgot to order!) we discussed this book.   This book brought out mixed opinions, strong opinions on both sides.  I had ladies in the group who loved the read, found it interesting, fast paced, and fabulous.  Several of the girls in the group had already moved on to books two and three.  I had a couple that found it pretty neutral, even predictable, and had guessed the outcome long before the final pages were turned.  And there were a few that hated the book.  And I do not use that word lightly.  The book brought up some hard memories and the gory, graphic parts of the book were found to be too much, as well as Mikael’s promiscuous behavior ( he seemed to have no problem sleeping with an assortment of women,including one who was his best friend, and married and her husband did not care).

While you may be reading that above paragraph and think the review must have been just a battle and a nightmare, no, it was quite the contrary.  This remarkable group of strong women that I have the pleasure of meeting with each month (and have since August of 2001), are very respectful of each others opinions.  I, having not completed the book at the time of review, really found this discussion to be intense and as I say often, the books that bring out the emotions in us are usually the best reviews, especially when we come up with an assortment of feelings about the book.

One of the thoughts that touched me was while what happens to the character of Lisbeth Salander is horrible, cruel, and truly hard to read, this really shows how strong of a woman she is and for those who have went on to read the other books, they feel that this first book really lays out the ground work of how she became who she is.

Read from my back deck (and a part in Finland, Minnesota)

Flash forward a few days ahead to where I have finished the books and these are my thoughts I would like to add:

Yes, there are parts of the book that are graphic and hard to read.  I was a little glad I had a heads up about that through my book club because at the time of our discussion I was at a part in the book where things were flowing along much like a Sherlock Holmes read… solving a crime, looking for clues, just with the twisted addition of a very unusual relationship between Mikael and Erika.

While this book is pretty much centered around the activities of Mikael, it is to my understanding that  in the next book and the one after, it is actually Lisbeth who takes the lead character role and I find that an interesting turn from our author.  Actually, it is quite brilliant to bring Lisbeth in as a background character and then make her more important as the series goes on.

I ended the book very much satisfied that I had just read a good mystery and I would continue on with this series.


It is a fact that Stieg Larsson was contracted for 10 books when he wrote the three books in this series.   Before these books were published, Stieg died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50.  It was his girlfriend who brought the books into the publisher and all three books were published.

Stieg had finished three detective novels in his trilogy “The Millenium-series” which were published posthumously; “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest”. Altogether, his trilogy has sold more than 20 million copies in 41 countries (spring of 2010), and he was the second bestselling author in the world 2008.


Movie version:

After I finished reading the book, I rented the movie to see what these characters would play out like.  While I have heard great thoughts about the movie, I have to disagree.  The character of Erika seemed to soft and always looked on the verge of tears.  In the book her relationship with Mikael is ongoing and she is frequently featured.  In the movie, I am not sure I would have understood the depth of the relationship if I had not read the book first.

As in most movies from books, many parts were left out including one of the crucial moments in the book that lets you really understand what Lisbeth is made of.  I was surprised that it was omitted and still wonder if I just blinked and missed it.   Overall thoughts on the movie:  It looks like they are making American versions of all three of the books into movies.  Currently the movie I watched was the swedish one with English subtitles.   I would be interested in seeing how the new version will change from the one I seen.

My Amazon Rating

Book Journeys 2010 reading map has been updated to include The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

When in Ostergotland, stop by Steve’s Coffee, you may run into Mikael and Lisbeth grabbing a cup of joe, both are heavy coffee drinkers.

Cover Story:  There are other covers to this book and while this is nothing special, it’s not an unlikable cover.  Something about it is appealing.

I purchased my copy of this book from BookWorld